As a relatively new US math specialist, I wanted to learn more about math specialist responsibilities. I found UW Stout’s “Leadership for Math Specialists” 8-week online course and thought it would be a good fit. I was particularly interested in learning more about how to best leverage my role to improve our students’ understanding of math. When I first began the course, I wondered what math specialists at other schools did and what roles they played in supporting math education. I quickly learned that this position is unique at each school based on the needs of their community.
Each week, we focused on a different topic. Here are a few takeaways.
Transformative shifts in classroom practice and how they connect to the Mathematical Practices: Small changes allow us to move towards a classroom environment where students reason, share their thinking, compare strategies, select efficient strategies, use multiple representations and are patient with the learning process.
Questioning strategies and discourse such as providing wait time, adapting questions into higher-level questions and monitoring participation: Bloom’s Taxonomy can be used as a guide to create higher-level questions in class and on assignments. This was a reminder that small tweaks can have a big impact on student learning.
Regular, short formative assessments: They allow us to monitor student understanding and can inform intervention. Additionally, regularly administered universal screeners and comparing pre-intervention and post-intervention outcomes shows us if we are meeting the needs of all of our students.
I am excited to share what I have learned with the US Math Department, US Learning Specialist, LS Math Specialist and Director of Curriculum and Innovation. This class left me wanting to learn more about about Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (which includes emotional and academic support), Response to Intervention and how to implement intervention given the time constraints of our school schedule. I would also like to learn more about universal screeners, such as iReady or MAPS, that can assess all the students at our school.